The invention relates generally to the field of mail delivery systems and more particularly to systems for delivering mail to the correct delivery address.
From the dawn of civilization people have directly transmitted information from one person to another. Information was first transmitted by speech and later by the written word. Writings enabled people to transmit information by messengers from a location in which the sender of the writing was present to another location where the receiver was present. In time, postal services were developed in which a person would deliver a letter to the post office in one city and an agent of the post office would deliver that letter to a post office in another city, where the letter would be picked up by the person to whom the letter was sent.
Ever since the numeric codification of streets and buildings received general acceptance, an individuals"" name and their household postal addresses have been linked. The sender of a letter or package would deliver a letter or package to the post, that had the correct recipient postal address and the post would deliver the letter or package to the numeric street address of the recipient of the letter or package. A correct recipient postal address for the delivery of the letter or package to the recipient included: the name of the recipient; the street address of the recipient; the city and state of the recipient; and the zip code of the recipient. Thus, the correct recipient postal address is usually the actual location of the recipient.
Letters or packages addressed to a correct recipient postal address are sometimes not delivered because the recipient may have moved and not yet completed a change-of-address form with the United States Postal Service (USPS). In that case, what likely would have happened is that the new resident of the address would have marked the mail xe2x80x9cNot at this Addressxe2x80x9d and put it back in a mail box. However, since the Postal Service would have no better address, it would have marked the mail piece xe2x80x9cUndeliverable as Addressed,xe2x80x9d endorsed the piece with xe2x80x9cNo Forwarding Address,xe2x80x9d and returned the mail piece to the sender. In this scenario, the piece of mail returned to the sender is marked xe2x80x9cUndeliverable as Addressed,xe2x80x9d and is, in fact, undeliverable as addressed.
In other cases, however, a mail piece may be marked xe2x80x9cUndeliverable as Addressedxe2x80x9d when in fact the address is correct. Sometimes this happens because of a mistake on the part of a Postal Service employee. Other times, the addressee may have provided a change of address shortly after having moved, almost ninety days earlier, and then a mailing company, without pre-screening its mailing addresses before addressing its mail, uses an address for which the forwarding instructions expire before the mail can be delivered. In that case, the Postal Service will mark the mail, correctly, as xe2x80x9cUndeliverable as Addressed,xe2x80x9d and then the company""s internal address database should be updated with current address information from, for example, the U.S. Postal Service National Change of Address (NCOA) database.
During 1997 the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mailed 99,919 refund checks to taxpayers that were returned by the USPS as undeliverable. The taxpayers may have written down their incorrect names and addresses, or the taxpayers may have moved without giving the IRS their new address. Other governmental agencies who make mass mailings also have large numbers of mail pieces returned as undeliverable. Mass mailers in the private sector, i.e. banks, brokerage firms, catalog companies, etc. also experience the above problem. Furthermore, mailers who want to send recipients valuable goods and/or legal papers, etc. want their mail to delivered to the correct person or entity.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a method that enables the post to reduce the number of undeliverable letters, flats, post cards and packages (mail) addresses to a recipient. The invention accomplishes the foregoing by: assigning a unique code to each recipient that specifically identifies the recipient, i.e., social security number, tax identification number, etc.; relating recipients code with recipients name and delivery address; relating recipients address changes with recipients name and unique code; permitting individuals or entities to add recipients unique code to the recipient mailing address; reading information on mail to capture the unique code when present, determining recipient""s delivery address from recipients code and recipient""s name.
An advantage of this invention is that each mail recipient will have a unique code that will always relate the recipients name and any address change with the unique code. Thus, the number of address change errors will be reduced and a larger percentage of mail will be delivered to the correct address.
In an alternate embodiment of this invention recipients unique code is encrypted.
In another alternate embodiment of this invention, the invention may be used in a corporate mail room.